A known occurrence when using a cooking appliance is for fires to develop when the appliance is left unattended. If forgotten for an elapsed period of time, the appliance being left on can cause the fire to continue for a greater duration or to worsen causing greater damage then had the appliance been turned off.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,130,412, 5,945,017 and 5,742,464 disclose devices which address similar problems. U.S. Pat. No. 4,659,909 to Knutson in particular discloses a kitchen range safety shutoff in which an appliance is arranged to be turned off in response to detection by a smoke detector of a possible fire. Reliance upon a smoke detector can be misleading however and can cause many false alarms. Furthermore arrangement of the shutoff disclosed in Knutson would permit the appliance to continue to operate in the event of a power loss or failure of some form to the detector.